One look and she's toast

Why do we do it? What is it that makes us want to collect things? The emergency room doctor with hundreds of toy ambulances crowding her desk and bookcases. The Cubs fanatic with a room full of autographed baseballs. The Collie lover whose home overflows with Lassie memorabilia (and dog hair). Those obsessions make sense. Sort of. Let’s just say there’s a thread of logic there. But what are we to make of someone who is captivated by toasters? The owner of the vintage model shown here said her passion burst upon her without warning decades ago at an antiques show in San Mateo, Cal. Spotting a Toast-O-Lator like the one in the photo, “It was love at first sight,” she said. For many years, it was unrequited love. Finally, relatives surprised the toaster lover with this one: her own, working model J, believed to have been built in 1947 in Long Island City, New York, where they were produced between 1938 and 1952 What makes the Toast-O-Lator unique is the way it “walks” the bread through the heating element on an escalator-like device and drops it out the other side onto a waiting plate. Incidentally, the “teeth” of the escalator are called “toast dogs.” Advertised as “The Aristocrat of Toasters” you can buy them on eBay and at antique stores for a few hundred dollars. Toast-O-Lator lore, intriguing as it might be, fails to answer why people collect toasters. So, I put this question to Eric Norcross, president of the Toaster Museum Foundation (and creator of the frighteningly complete website toaster.org). “Toasters produce a comforting food,” explained Norcross, who has turned his own 500 plus toaster collection over to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan where they one day will be on public view. “Bread,” says Norcross, “is a simple, delicious food that nearly everyone can relate to.” On that note, let’s all raise a glass of orange juice and make a toast…to toast.

Tribune photo by Bill Hogan

The ancient Egyptians are believed to be the first to make what we think of as “modern” bread (leavened with natural yeast) and they probably made the first toast by putting it near a fire.

“Toast sweat” is the droplets of water that condense back on the bread when the warm toast is placed on a cooler surfac

Eating your way to inner peace

Fess up. One time or another, you’ve played with your food. We all have. Maybe it was just taking Auntie’s inedibles and moving them around the plate so it looked like you’re digging into a helping of overcooked whatnot. Or perhaps you were lucky enough to have a dog at your knee beneath the table. You’d secretly feed him the vegetables you had to eat or not be allowed to leave the table—ever. Some of us learned to juggle by using items from the produce department: oranges, apples, and, for the advanced students, bananas. Is there a toddler in the land who didn’t spread spaghetti and tomato sauce from the highchair to the walls to the kitchen ceiling? Usually more than once. And doesn’t every baby album just have to feature at least one embarrassing photo of you with your face smeared in some colorful mess, like carrots, pureed peas or chocolate cake? Which brings us to the jolly items in the picture. It’s a Buddha Jell-O mold—and two cheery, cherry offspring. These molds come in a colorful set of four identical Buddhas ($68, Elements, 741 N. Wells St., elementschicago.com), gelatin and spoon not included. For those who aren’t familiar with the teachings, aboutbuddha.org is a basic primer starting with, “Every living being has the same basic wish—to be happy and to avoid suffering.” Buddha, we learn, generally means “Awakened One” and that “It is impossible to describe all the good qualities of Buddha. A Buddha’s compassion, wisdom, and power are completely beyond conception.” Not beyond conception, however, is the fun of spooning up a big dose of jiggling fruity goodness with the help of Buddha shown here. The website tells us that Buddhas can manifest themselves as men or women, animals, wind or rain, mountains or islands. Well, why not also as a desert that, at least in the time it takes to devour it, offers an inner peace—of a good-in-the-tummy kind.

What recession? Not with this dinner plate

You don’t need a PhD in economics to know that you’re getting walloped at the grocery store. Let the eggheads of academia debate whether the nation is in a recession yet. What we know for sure is that eggs cost more than two bucks a dozen. The cost of food gobbles up more and more of the family budget and the so-called experts haven’t a clue when or if escalating food prices will level off. A decade ago, you were griping that milk was $2.63 a gallon. Now it’s edging toward $4. Is all that grim pocketbook news making you blue? Then you won’t want to check out the depressing “inflation calculator” I found on the website of the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Website (www.bls.gov). With just a couple clicks you can find out that it takes $324.68 to buy the same goods and services that went for $100 in 1978. This handy device will allow you to figure out just how badly your pay has failed to keep up with your costs. One cheery note, this same website says that the cost of a pound of chocolate chip cookies is almost the same today ($2.68) as it was 10 years ago. Sadly, the same cannot be said for ice cream, up more than $1 a 1/2 gallon since 1998. We can’t stop eating altogether. So what’s a consumer to do? Eat more chocolate chip cookies? Drink less milk? Cut out eggs and ice cream? Iceberg lettuce, of all tasteless things, actually costs less today than it did 10 years ago. Fill up on that and feel satisfied? I don’t think so. French design mavericks Jean Sebastien Ides and Ivan Duval, founders of the design firm Atypyk (www.atypyk.com), came up with the elegant solution shown here, available at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art ($12.95). How simple. Make your grocery budget go four times further, just cut the size of your dinner plate. Bon appétit.

True grit

Does everything have to be so complicated? It takes three different remote controls to watch a video on television. There are 200 different shades of white paint to choose from for the bedroom walls. You need a teeny tiny screwdriver (sold separately) to change the battery in the flashlight.

And don’t get me started about finding the cheapest long distance phone company, remembering passwords (35 and counting) or locating the “service” at the toll free customer service phone number.

For all these reasons—and so many more—let us admire an elegantly simple solution to a common problem.

Cooking tools even Ellen could love

It's not that I can't boil water--it's that I burn it. Which is why I went shopping with Stephanie Izard, the chef/owner of Bucktown's Scylla restaurant. Miracle of miracles, I even told Stephanie some things she didn't know--OK, one thing--about cooking gear.

About this blogLove it or hate it, we all do it: Shop for stuff. Maybe you think of it as a thrilling pastime. Or, you'd rather have your tonsils removed without anesthesia than spend time at a mall.
No matter where you come on the Shop-o-meter, this is the place for you. Got a great find? A gripe? A question? A rant? Shopping adviser Ellen Warren wants you to be part of the conversation. And read her Shopping Adviser column every Thursday in the At Play section and her Just One Thing essay on acquisitions every Sunday in the Tribune Magazine.